Products
Coca-Cola Nepal introduces food and beverage orders through WhatsApp
Products
Coca-Cola Nepal sees WhatsApp as an optimal solution to support the struggling food and beverage trade in the country after the pandemic. In order to make it easier for customers to order and increase business, the company launched a food and beverage ordering service on the messaging app.
As the Covid-19 restrictions are slowly being lifted in Nepal, businesses are facing new challenges. They were impacted by slowing sales during the lockdowns, and now have to figure out ways to make up for these losses. Especially for smaller companies, that’s not an easy task.
In order to boost their business and provide more financial security, Coca-Cola Nepal decided to jump in and help by introducing an ordering service on WhatsApp.
In order to rapidly increase of sales of the food- and beverage stores of their vendors, Coca-Cola launched an ordering service on WhatsApp. Given that WhatsApp is the most popular instant messaging app in Nepal, far more popular than even SMS, and more accessible than a company app (WhatsApp works even in remote areas with slow data connections), turning WhatsApp into an ordering app for Coca-Cola vendors makes a lot of sense.
According to the company, the app will help connect retailers and distributors with ease and place their orders directly through WhatsApp.
On the one hand Coca-Cola’s support in setting up the ordering service can be crucial in helping the industry to get back to pre-pandemic sales. On the other hand, Coca-Cola’s approach shows that there’s actually a much deeper issue among the global food and beverage industry: getting direct access to customers.
Typically, there’s no direct-to-consumer approach. Customers buy products at retailers. For global companies like Coca-Cola having added costs for a distributer might be worth it as it takes off the burden of having to deal with a large part of the supply chain. For smaller players, however, these costs are significant.
Using a direct-to-consumer channel like WhatsApp can therefore be a clever tool to forge closer connections to customers, and cut some of the distribution costs.
The Brazilian food delivery giant, iFood, is the number one company when it comes to restaurant orders and deliveries in the country. Due to the huge popularity of WhatsApp in Brazil, iFood decided to try using the instant messaging apps for food orders as well (even though, they already have their own app).
With a specific marketing campaign on WhatsApp where they sent out coupons to push orders, customers increasingly took to the messenger app to place an order. The success was impressive!
iFood was able to:
This shows the potential of using more personal messaging apps for the food and beverage industry, but also beyond!
The international sports brand Women’s Best, for example, serves customers in several countries — by using instant messaging apps like WhatsApp and iMessage as a sales and service channel. By cutting out not only physical stores, but also costly call-centers and slow e-mail communication, the company has also made the sales process a lot more efficient.
Women’s Best uses the professional messaging solution, Sinch Engage, which allows them to keep the communication centralized, no matter what messaging app the customer inquiries are coming from.
In addition, with Sinch Engage, Women’s Best was able to use a simple drag-and-drop tool, and build their own chatbot in a few minutes (no special IT skills required). With this, they can pre-qualify questions, automatically direct them to the right agent, and even automate answers. Thi
This has helped them to connect better to customers, reduce the workload, and save money, says CEO and co-founder of Women’s Best, David Kurzman.
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